Chief of militant groups: Taliban has no role in Kashmir

Syed Salahuddin, chairman of the United Jehad Council (UJC), an amalgam of at least 13 militant outfits fighting New Delhi's rule in Indian-controlled Kashmir, said they have no links with Taliban and ruled out their presence in Kashmir.

"We don't have any physical link with Taliban," a Srinagar based news gathering agency Kashmir News Services (KNS) quoted Salahuddin as saying. "We don't want Taliban to come to Kashmir and they are needed in Afghanistan the most."

Salahuddin, who is in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan- controlled Kashmir, told KNS in an interview that people spreading rumors about the Taliban in Kashmir were trying to "malign the Kashmiri resistance struggle".

Meanwhile, the head of separatist hardline Muslim women group, Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of Faith) Asiya Andrabi in an interview to a news website Kashmir Dispatch has also said Taliban prior to entering Kashmir have to take Kashmir leadership into confidence. "When Afghan Taliban or al Qaeda comes to Kashmir, we should keep in mind that road-map or agenda should be ours," Andrabi told the website.

"We have to think that our brothers are coming to help us to liberate us from India but we shouldn't surrender everything to them. Before they enter here, there should be debate with them and we must clear ourselves to them that there should be Islam in Kashmir not to propagate any ideology."

Assertions are rife that following the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014, the Taliban will enter Indian-controlled Kashmir to fight Indian army. Separatist leaders in the restive region have been critical of Taliban and al Qaeda ideology.

A guerrilla war is going on between militants and Indian troopers stationed in restive region since 1989.